Many commentators, myself included, have warned that the House was playing a dangerous game by taking the box marked “impeachment” down from the shelf and beginning to bat those balls around when there were no plausible grounds—none—for playing the game to begin with. Impeachment—again, as many commentators, myself included, have pointed out—was intended by the Founders to be a remedy of last resort, an in-case-of-fire-break-glass option when every other recourse had failed.
As recently as this March, Nancy Pelosi had insisted that impeachment had to be a bipartisan decision, only employed to address the most serious crimes. In endorsing the House charade, she shelved that scruple along with all her other ones. The result, as Andy McCarthy and others have pointed out, will be to make impeachment much more common. The price of “trivializing” impeachment, as the House has just done, will likely be to make it the “new normal.”
Indeed, the legal scholar Jonathan Turley, a prominent critic of the president, but one who has not therefore tainted his reason, pointed out that by the standards employed against Donald Trump, every living president could have been impeached. Turley was particularly troubled by the charge that the president was guilty of obstructing Congress. Why? Because all the president did was go to court to challenge House demands for certain evidence. The House, Turley noted, “set an abbreviated period for investigation, arguably the shortest investigation of any presidential impeachment.”
And then they said if you don’t turn over the evidence during that period, you’re obstructing Congress. Well, President Trump went to court to challenge the necessity of handing over that material. Both Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon were allowed to go all the way to the Supreme Court—they ultimately lost, and Nixon resigned soon after. My concern is that this really does seem like you are making an appeal to the court into a high crime or a misdemeanor (my emphasis).I think there are two takeaways from this sad affair. One concerns the future place of impeachment in our system of government. I think that Andy McCarthy is right in suggesting that the ultimate sanction of impeachment has more and more been been routinely threatened because the usual checks and balances have been more or less neutered by the growing power of the so-called administrative state. “The problem,” McCarthy writes, is that
after a century of progressive governance . . . these checks do not work anymore. The federal government and its administrative state have grown monstrously big. Federal money is now as much tied to social welfare as to traditional government functions. Budgeting is slap-dash and dysfunctional. To threaten to deny funds or leave agencies leaderless is to be seen, not as reining in executive excess, but as heartlessly harming this or that interest group. Lawmakers would rather run up tens of trillions in debt than be portrayed that wayA lot more could be said about the growth of administrative power, which is essentially executive power, in the face of the paralysis or abdication of responsibility of Congress to fulfill its core responsibilities.
But in the context of our present Trump-centric drama, I suspect that the chief issue is a deeper, structural deformation. I mean the gradual transformation of our government from a vigorous two-party system into a one-and-a-half party system. I’ve written about this before. The idea is not mine but something I crib from conversations with the commentator James Piereson of the William E. Simon Foundation.
The bottom line is that, for many decades now, no matter which party has been in office, the real center of power has resided in the regime party, the party that government itself evolved into. Although plenty of Republicans have sat around this table, happy to engorge themselves on the attendant spoils, the regime party has always been the Democratic party. They encouraged an agenda of dependency that they could simultaneously cater to, exploit, and manage—an agenda that resulted not only in that bloated administrative apparatus that is staffed primarily by Democrats but also a sort of professional underclass of clients of this apparatus. Until the election of Donald Trump, the fealty of this underclass was reliably Democratic. Now there are cracks in the edifice, a terrifying prospect for their managers.
This is the thing to keep in mind. Donald Trump represents an existential threat to this status quo. Which is why he had to be stopped. On January 20, 2017, 19 minutes after Trump was inaugurated, the Washington Post announced in a headline “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.” Indeed, there were calls for Trump’s impeachment even before he was sworn in. Al Green (D-Texas) put it with admirable clarity when he said, back in 2017 (reiterating the sentiment in 2018) that “I am concerned that if we do not impeach this president, then he will get reelected.”
Trump’s real crime, in other words, was having been elected in the first place.
The point is that Donald Trump had to be impeached not because of anything he had done or had failed to do but because of who he was, what he represented: an existential threat to string-pullers of our one-and-a-half-party system. That is why the Democrats can ride roughshod over the rule of law, to say nothing of precedent and tradition, ruining who knows how many lives, tying up the business of government with preposterous special counsel investigations, House hearings, and the like, while the Republicans mostly vibrate in impotent fury and they emerge from the turmoil scot-free.
Again, there are some signs of fissures in this decades-on Democratic dispensation. The pugilistic response of the president himself is one such sign (“Cet animal est très méchant: quand on l’attaque il se défend”—“This animal is very mean: it defends itself when attacked”). Another sign of change is the stalwartness of Mitch McConnell and the doggedness of U.S. Attorney John Durham and his boss, Attorney General William Barr. My own guess is that we’ll know real progress has been made when—or rather if—a raft of indictments are handed down in the business of the deep-state effort to take down the Trump campaign and then his presidency...
Monday, December 23, 2019
President Trump's an Existential Threat to the Regime Party
From Roger Kimball, at American Greatness, "The ‘Impeachment’ of Donald Trump":
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood Gentrification (VIDEO)
I don't watch SNL anymore, but you gotta get a kick out of Eddie Murphy.
At LAT, "Eddie Murphy returns to ‘Saturday Night Live’ with Buckwheat, Mr. Robinson and Gumby in tow."
At LAT, "Eddie Murphy returns to ‘Saturday Night Live’ with Buckwheat, Mr. Robinson and Gumby in tow."
GPA vs. SAT: Which is Better Predictor of College Success
I never took the SAT, and I did fine in college. I had to take the GRE to get into graduate school, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with these standardized tests, and their drawbacks. That said, I certainly wouldn't eliminate them. This whole debate is stupid. Banning placement tests will only dumb down college further.
At LAT, "Grades vs. SAT scores: Which is a better predictor of college success?":
At LAT, "Grades vs. SAT scores: Which is a better predictor of college success?":
Grades vs. SAT scores: Which is a better predictor of college success? https://t.co/IG6zb7g5u7— L.A. Times: L.A. Now (@LANow) December 22, 2019
As a student at Kaiser High School in Fontana two years ago, Melissa Morfin-Acevedo bombed her SAT test, scoring in the bottom third percentile nationally.Keep reading.
The daughter of an immigrant single mother with a fifth-grade education, Morfin-Acevedo lived below the poverty line and couldn’t afford test prep tutors. She took the 8 a.m. test exhausted, having returned home from her theater job past midnight that day.
But her 4.1 GPA helped her win admission to UC Riverside — and today the second-year student in political science is thriving in the honors program, earning mostly A’s, and preparing for a career in law or public service.
“The SAT score does not reflect your future possible success in college,” she said. “If you want it, you can do it.”
Pressure is growing on the University of California and California State University to drop the SAT and ACT exams as admission requirements because of their perceived bias against disadvantaged students and underrepresented minorities. As part of the debate, policymakers are considering increasing the weight of high school grades in the admissions process.
Research has shown that grades are the best single predictor of college performance and aren’t as heavily influenced as the standardized exams by income, parent education levels and race.
But the ACT and College Board, which owns the SAT, argue that a combination of grades and test scores is the best overall guide to selecting students who are likely to succeed in college. Using grades without test scores could exacerbate inequities, test officials say, because grade inflation is worse in affluent schools, according to research they have reviewed.
The UC Academic Senate, which sets admissions standards, is expected to issue recommendations on the tests by February, with Cal State to follow. The issue, which has drawn international attention because of the size and prestige of the public university systems, raises several pressing questions. How do students with high grades but low SAT scores actually do in college? What support do they need — and get? Are there drawbacks to relying more heavily on grades?
UC Riverside is a living laboratory that offers some answers.
Among the University of California’s nine undergraduate campuses, UC Riverside has the second lowest SAT scores for entering freshmen — an average 1260, the 82nd percentile. But the Inland Empire campus has won accolades for helping disadvantaged students succeed, including a No. 1 ranking for graduating low-income students among national universities by US News & World Report this year. The majority of its 24,000 students are low-income and the first in their families to attend college; 4 in 10 are underrepresented minorities.
To flesh out the questions, the campus provided data on SAT scores, high school GPAs and student outcomes for 7,889 freshmen who enrolled in 2012 and 2013. The bottom line: The most successful students had both high GPAs and high test scores. But those with equally high grades and lower test scores weren’t far behind.
Among 1,807 UC Riverside students with GPAs of 3.75 or higher and SAT scores above 900 — the 32nd percentile — outcomes were not so different between those with higher- and lower-end SAT test scores:
*The six-year graduation rate for those with SAT scores between 900 and 1090 was 81% compared with 83% for those with SAT scores between 1100 and 1600, the highest score possible.If UC drops the SAT and ACT in favor of giving grades greater weight, systemwide graduation rates are likely to drop. But the benefits will be substantial to students who otherwise might not have qualified for UC admission because of low test scores, said Zachary Bleemer, a research associate at UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education.
*The rate of students returning for a second year was 91% for those with the lower scores and 94% for those with the highest scores.
*The first-year GPA was 2.78, a B-, for students with lower scores compared with 3.36, a B+, for those with the highest scores.
*Students with SAT scores below 900, however, did noticeably worse. Their graduation and second-year retention rates were 10 percentage points below the group with the highest SAT test scores. Still, 73% graduated within six years compared with 65% of peers with higher SAT scores but lower GPAs.
His analysis last year looked at the academic records of about 8,000 UC students who enrolled under a program that guaranteed admission to the top 4% of each high school’s graduating class between 2001 and 2011, but whose average SAT scores were nearly 300 points below their peers at the UC campuses they attended.
Their five-year graduation rate was 77% compared with an average 83% among UC peers. But it was substantially higher than it would have been if they had attended a Cal State or community college campus, his analysis found. The UC students also earned nearly $15,000 more annually six to eight years after enrolling.
The findings suggest that students with high grades but lower test scores can thrive at UC schools and counter the “mismatch hypothesis” that less competitive students are better off at less selective universities, Bleemer said.
For university officials who must weigh the complexities of the criteria in their admissions decisions, there are no easy answers.
Emily Engelschall, UC Riverside director of undergraduate admissions, says she sees the shortcomings of standardized testing but that the scores do help evaluate grades across vastly different high schools. She also worries that dropping the testing requirement could exacerbate grade inflation.
“If you don’t have some sort of standardized tests to balance out grade inflation,” she said, “then that does take one piece of the puzzle away from an admissions professional to help make a decision about a student.”
Jessica Howell, the College Board’s vice president of research, has said that a greater reliance on high school grades in the name of equity would be “misguided” because grade inflation is associated with wealth.
The College Board points to a 2018 study of North Carolina public school students in grades eight through 10 between 2005 and 2016. The study found that median GPAs rose across the board over time, but did so more in affluent schools than in low-income ones.
The study also raised questions about the reliability of grades in measuring mastery of content. It found that only 21% of students who received A’s in algebra I achieved the highest proficiency level in end-of-course exams and 57% of those who received Bs failed to score marks indicating college and career readiness.
“The latest research is resoundingly clear,” Howell said in a statement. “Grade inflation is a serious problem, particularly in high schools that serve more affluent communities.”
Yet the Riverside campus is filled with students from less privileged backgrounds whose hard work has helped them transcend low test scores and rise to UC’s academic rigor...
Playmate Iryna
Following-up, "Nice Playmate Lady."
Sugar daddy applications 🤣, jk - TEXT HERE https://t.co/M03maYOVmJ pic.twitter.com/0ZWx5sLZoq
— playmateiryna (@IrynaIvanova) December 21, 2019
Rita Ora in Metallic Halterneck Swimsuit
At London's Daily Mail:
BONUS: "Rita Ora in Red Bikini."
Rita Ora showcases plenty of side-boob in a metallic halterneck swimsuit as she continues to soak up the sun during festive family break to St. Barts https://t.co/GJKzB9ywj0
— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) December 22, 2019
BONUS: "Rita Ora in Red Bikini."
Rachel Cook Shaved Head
At Inquisitr, "Rachel Cook Goes Nude for Second Issue of ‘WTVR’ Magazine."
And Celeb Jihad, "RACHEL COOK SHAVED HEAD NUDE PHOTOS."
And Celeb Jihad, "RACHEL COOK SHAVED HEAD NUDE PHOTOS."
Saturday, December 21, 2019
Minka Kelly
At Celeb Jihad, "MINKA KELLY TOP-SLIP VIDEO."
Also at Phun.
Also at Phun.
https://t.co/V36GnWpZdW pic.twitter.com/2O6ozHWB9e
— Minka Kelly (@minkakelly) October 7, 2019
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Brooks Nader
Seen on Twitter:
Brooks Nader on the Red Carpet Braless in Nipple Pasties - https://t.co/uOTmD4hQBu - pic.twitter.com/tPdeTVLYTm
— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) December 11, 2019
Brooks Nader is a total GODDESS. https://t.co/E5rqWMWgtf pic.twitter.com/UII3cqYpYh
— Sports Illustrated Swimsuit (@SI_Swimsuit) December 19, 2019
How Russian Agents Hunt Down Kremlin Opponents
Very dramatic.
At Der Spiegel, "Putin's Killers in Europe":
At Der Spiegel, "Putin's Killers in Europe":
Putin's Killers in Europe: How Russian Agents Hunt Down Kremlin Opponents https://t.co/hERYQFCzUu pic.twitter.com/5PFZg8GTaH— SPIEGEL ONLINE English (@SPIEGEL_English) December 9, 2019
In the summer of 2013, a killer in Moscow rode a bicycle toward his victim. The Russian businessman Albert Nazranov saw him, and a short brawl ensued. The killer shot the man in the head and upper body at close range. Then he rode away. All of that can be seen in surveillance footage of the crime.More.
In the summer of 2019, a killer also rode a bicycle toward his victim, only this time in Berlin. He shot Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, of Georgia, in the head and upper body at close range, before riding away. That's how witnesses described the scene.
Reporting by DER SPIEGEL, Bellingcat, The Insider and The Dossier Center now reveals that not only were both murders very similar -- they were also likely carried out by the same person. A forensic comparison of both perpetrator photos reveals clear similarities. The man who carried a passport bearing the name Vadim Sokolov in Berlin was the Russian Vadim Krasikov, the killer who is thought to have also struck in Moscow.
German General Federal Prosecutor Peter Frank has now assumed responsibility for the investigation into the Berlin murder case at the federal level because, he says, they are of "special importance." Germany's chief prosecutor believes that Russian government authorities deliberately issued Krasikov's new identity, an assumption based on the fact that Moscow took the surprising step in 2015 of revoking an international search warrant for Krasikov and issuing a new identity card to him with the name "Vadim Sokolov" a short time later. It's not likely to have been a coincidence.
The Chief Federal Prosecutor's Office is accusing the Russian government or one of its henchmen of having murdered Khangoshvili in broad daylight at the end of August, a hitjob on German soil against a man who had come to the country as an asylum-seeker,
A similar crime committed in the United Kingdom last year sparked an international crisis when suspected agents with the Russian military intelligence agency GRU conducted an attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter using the Russian neurotoxin Novichok. Twenty-nine countries expelled 146 Russian diplomats in response to the crime. Berlin also forced four representatives of Russia to leave the country.
A Slow Political Response
Despite the similarities, officials in Berlin seemed to be struggling in coming up with a political response to the Khangoshvili murder. For some time, officials said evidence in the case was too unclear. They argued that a fake ID in Russia could also be obtained through bribery and that it couldn't automatically be assumed that the Russian government had been involved.
But last Wednesday, just as the German federal prosecutor took over the case, the government in Berlin also adopted a tougher line. They ordered the chargé d'affaires at the Russian Embassy to the Foreign Ministry, where officials informed him that two staffers in the defense affairs division of the embassy, both of whom are believed by German security authorities to be members GRU intelligence service, would be expelled from Germany.
The Foreign Ministry justified the decision by saying that the cooperation by the Russian authorities has been "insufficient." "We view the expulsions as a very strong message to the Russian side to provide us with immediate and comprehensive support in clarifying the identity and background of the alleged perpetrator," said Helge Braun, chief of staff at Angela Merkel's Chancellery. "Given that there has been a lack of support for months, I have absolutely no comprehension of how Russia could be outraged or even be thinking about countermeasures."
Addressing a question about the case at last week's NATO summit in London, Chancellor Merkel stated: "We took this action because we have not seen Russian support in helping us solve this murder." Merkel has left open whether she will take up the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Ukraine summit in Paris on Monday. But it's difficult to imagine that she wouldn't.
The government in Berlin wants to wait until the investigationsproceeds further before considering whether to take further punitive action against Moscow. Officials in the Chancellery are still wary about comparing the foreign policy fallout of the Khangoshvili killing with the Skripal case. But the circumstantial evidence is strong and there is much to suggest that Georgian national Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was killed for political reasons, even if Russia, as so often in the past, has denied all accusations...
The End of the World Trade Organization?
Who cares, really?
The conflict between economic regionalism and global economic openness, embodied in the post-WWII multilateral trade regime, has been a longtime topic in international relations theory.
The Trump administration is accelerating the shift to regionalism.
Not to mention Brexit, which should go through on January 31st, thanks to the Conservative triumph in the general election.
All is not lost, as bilateral trade agreements will take the place of wider multilateral pacts.
In any case, at the Los Angeles Times, "House passage of USMCA marks major shift away from free-trade policies":
The conflict between economic regionalism and global economic openness, embodied in the post-WWII multilateral trade regime, has been a longtime topic in international relations theory.
The Trump administration is accelerating the shift to regionalism.
Not to mention Brexit, which should go through on January 31st, thanks to the Conservative triumph in the general election.
All is not lost, as bilateral trade agreements will take the place of wider multilateral pacts.
In any case, at the Los Angeles Times, "House passage of USMCA marks major shift away from free-trade policies":
WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly passed the new North American trade deal, voting in unusually bipartisan fashion just a day after impeaching President Trump strictly on party lines.
Approval of the trade bill, which now goes to the Senate for almost certain ratification, did far more than help Trump notch a major achievement: It marked a significant change in U.S. economic strategy toward the rest of the world.More.
For much of the last 70 years, throughout the Cold War and down to more recent times, Washington used America’s vast wealth and economic power to build friendships and alliances that bolstered national security.
That strategy included a fundamental commitment to free trade — opening the large U.S. market to products from all over the world. For the most part, American companies and their workers had to compete against foreign businesses and labor with little or no protection from the federal government.
As Trump has long complained, that free-trade policy cost millions of American jobs. But leaders of both parties and economic experts considered it worth the price because it boosted American growth, generating many new jobs, and opened new opportunities for many U.S. companies to profit in a global economy. At the same time, it helped cement U.S. leadership in the world.
“In the post-World War II era, we were so much more powerful and so much richer than everybody else that we could improve the living standards at home and still give away the store on trade,” said Clyde Prestowitz, a former top trade negotiator in President Reagan’s administration.
“And we’re now culminated at a moment in which the cost of our old policy is really hard to bear, and so we’re de facto changing our policy,” he said.
The march toward free global markets with lower tariffs and other barriers always had exceptions. Beginning in the 1970s, U.S. companies began to complain about unfair competition: dumping of textiles and steel by foreign producers subsidized by their governments, for instance, or the sale of below-cost television sets, electronics and other consumer goods.
Reagan and his successors responded to these complaints with demands for import quotas and other measures. But overall, the United States remained committed to a broad strategy of free trade — relying on market forces and competition to determine outcomes.
While Republican business leaders complained about specific instances of what they saw as unfair tactics, such as currency manipulation and intellectual property theft, they largely remained committed to the overall free-trade strategy.
Democrats, responding to their union supporters, complained that American workers were paying a heavy price for a system that primarily benefited corporations and upper-income Americans.
The original North American Free Trade Agreement, which passed the House in 1993 by a margin of only 34 votes, highlighted the political unease about trade.
The agreement, however, fit squarely into that strategy of using trade in part for geopolitical reasons. It aimed to make Mexico more prosperous and hence make the United States more secure at a time when radical, leftist regimes seemed to be on the rise in Latin America. Economically, many saw it as a bulwark against rising competition from a unified Europe and Asian tiger economies.
NAFTA tore down tariffs and shaped North America into a powerful economic bloc — three-way trade in goods now reaches $1.3 trillion — but it was in many ways outdated in a global economy driven much more by technology and data.
Trump long attacked NAFTA, calling it one of the worst trade agreements ever and promising to renegotiate it. As president, he has attacked the whole system of free trade, undermining the World Trade Organization, which the U.S. helped create in the 1990s, and starting trade wars not only with China but with longtime U.S. allies such as Europe, Canada and Mexico.
He has enjoyed quiet but significant Democratic support on the issue. Witness the large bipartisan majority for the new version of NAFTA.
Renamed United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, the measure won approval by the Democratic-majority House 385-41, a remarkable show of unity at a time of deep partisan acrimony.
Not that there wasn’t the usual jostling and one-upmanship which have characterized relations between congressional Democrats and Trump.
“Of course we’ll take credit for it, because what he proposed did not fill the bill of what he described,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said shortly before the vote, referring to Democrats’ successful pressure on the administration to amend the trade deal to strengthen enforcement of labor and environmental protections.
Earlier Wednesday night, at a rally in Battle Creek, Mich., Trump insisted that Pelosi and other Democrats had no choice but to pass USMCA.
“She had a lot of pressure, especially from manufacturing areas, farm areas, a lot of pressure to sign it.... I had a lot of union labor vote for me, tremendous amount of labor,” he said...
Jennifer Delacruz's Weekend Forecast
Well, pre-Christmas football all day today, and wonderful SoCal weather!
Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
Comparing Modern Dodge Muscle Cars to the Iconic Vehicles of the 1960s (VIDEO)
My buddy Greg Joseph is interviewed in this L.A. Times feature on the new Dodge Hellcat lineup.
See, "Do modern Dodge muscle cars capture the magic harnessed by Big Willie Robinson?":
See, "Do modern Dodge muscle cars capture the magic harnessed by Big Willie Robinson?":
The Daytona Big Willie drove — he dubbed it the King Daytona — was especially rare. It was one of only a few dozen 1969 Daytonas built with a Hemi motor, whose hemispherical combustion chambers aid performance. https://t.co/ddue5mx1cb
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 19, 2019
I couldn’t get any seat time in the late Robinson’s car — it was destroyed in 1971, and his wife’s matching car was wrecked a few years later. But I did track down a 1969 Hemi Daytona owned by car collector Greg Joseph.
Joseph actually knew Robinson; he met the leader of the Brotherhood of Street Racers in the 1990s via former Times Publisher Otis Chandler. At the time, Joseph was curating the muscle car collection of Chandler, whose holdings included a 1969 Hemi Daytona of his own.
Joseph said he was touched by the realization that he, Chandler and Robinson and his street racer wife each owned one of these unique rides.
“They truly were icons,” Joseph said. “It kind of brings back the nostalgia, the memories of the time when I went to all the drag races.”
Joseph, a retired history professor who long taught at Long Beach City College, said he sees the through line from the Daytona to the Redeye, in part because both harness what he called “state-of-the-art technology to go fast.”
“This is all-out high-performance,” said Joseph, gesturing at the Redeye. “Same with the Daytona.”
Still, the Redeye isn’t entirely state-of-the-art. It derives its power from a pushrod V-8 — that’s old-fashioned technology in an era of overhead cam motors with variable valve timing — but I get Joseph’s point. This is a car whose launch can be programmed via a special mode that holds the RPM at a desired spot in the power band for optimal acceleration.
And the Redeye carries over other technology from the 2018 Challenger Demon, an even higher-performance version of the car that put out 840 horsepower — and did zero to 60 in 2.3 seconds — but was sold for only one year. Among the goodies that have found their way from the Demon to the Redeye is an intercooler chiller system that keeps the motor at the ideal temperature.
Although the Redeye was the more extreme of the two cars I tested, the Charger Hellcat seemed to turn more heads during the week I drove it. As with the Challenger, this version of the Charger has been around for several years, but in Hellcat guise, the exterior modifications stand out. Perhaps that’s because they’re transforming a sedan with comparably more sedate looks.
At one stoplight, a man in a black minivan eyed the Charger Hellcat lustily from the neighboring lane. I edged the car forward, summoning a bark from the big V-8, and the other driver laughed appreciatively. Up the street, our lanes merged into one, and he happily ceded the road.
The minivan may have been no match for the Charger Hellcat, but the American muscle car rivalry is alive and well. And in many ways — even as manufacturers move toward increased electrification and hybridization — we are in the midst of a new golden age for these vehicles. A horsepower war touched off by the launch of the 2015 Challenger and Charger Hellcats shows no signs of slowing down. Chevrolet’s Camaro ZL1 offers 650 horsepower, and Ford is readying a top-end Mustang — the Shelby GT500 — packing 760 horsepower.
The Hellcat cars both deliver a quintessential muscle car ride. But it wasn’t easy for me to see a link to the Dodge drag strip heroes of yore, amid the many trappings of modernity.
Still, I was able to find a connection to the past in an unexpected place: some of the new cars’ shortcomings. Details like the Redeye’s subpar seats — yielding in all the wrong places — seemed to telegraph Dodge’s focus on speed, and little else. Thinking about the Hellcat cars this way, I grew to view many of their flaws as charming. And the ties to the 1960s were ultimately driven home via a mishap.
Before the Redeye was lent to The Times, it underwent some mechanical work that left the interior smelling of gasoline. Workers had attempted to mitigate it, but the bouquet of fuel stubbornly persisted.
But it didn’t bother me. It felt a little rough, a little raw. Like how old cars sometimes smell after they’ve been throttled hard.
Even if it was unintended, it made the Redeye feel a little bit closer to 1969.
A little bit closer to the Daytona. A little bit closer to Robinson.
Friday, December 20, 2019
Meghan L. O'Sullivan, Windfall
At Amazon, Meghan L. O'Sullivan, Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America's Power.
The Queen's Speech Introducing Boris Johnson's Conservative Government (VIDEO)
At the Guardian U.K., "Queen's speech: PM points to harder Brexit and 10-year rule."
And the Los Angeles Times, "Boris Johnson unveils ambitious agenda for Britain’s Brexit and government reforms":
And the Los Angeles Times, "Boris Johnson unveils ambitious agenda for Britain’s Brexit and government reforms":
LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson signaled an end to Britain’s era of Brexit deadlock Thursday, announcing a packed legislative program intended to take the U.K. out of the European Union on Jan. 31 and overhaul a range of government services, including the cash-starved National Health Service.
The commanding House of Commons majority won by Johnson’s Conservative Party in last week’s general election all but guarantees he will be able to turn those promises into law, although with Brexit casting a shadow over the British economy, there’s a question mark over how he will pay for it all.
In a speech delivered from a golden throne in Parliament by Queen Elizabeth II, Johnson opened the legislative floodgates after three years in which minority Conservative governments tried in vain to win legislators’ backing for their Brexit plans.
“This is the moment to repay the trust of those who sent us here by delivering on the people’s priorities,” Johnson told lawmakers after the speech. “They want to move politics on and move the country on.”
In less than 10 minutes, the monarch rattled through more than two dozen bills the government intends to pass in the coming year. The first will be the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill, the law needed to make Brexit a reality, which is set to receive its first significant parliamentary vote Friday.
The bill commits Britain to leaving the EU on Jan. 31 and to concluding trade talks with the bloc by the end of 2020. Trade experts and EU officials say striking a free-trade deal within 11 months will be a struggle, but Johnson insists he won’t agree to any more delays. That vow has set off alarm bells among businesses, which fear that means the country will face a “no-deal” Brexit at the start of 2021.
The government also plans to pass several other Brexit-related measures, including a new “points-based” immigration system that will be introduced after Brexit, when EU citizens will lose the automatic right to live and work in the U.K.
There are also plans to overhaul agriculture, fishing, trade and financial services after Brexit in ways that will have a huge — though still largely unknown — effect on the British economy...
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Democrat Rashida Tlaib Celebrates Trump's Impeachment (VIDEO)
Actually, it's perfectly natural to celebrate something for which you've worked so hard.
The problem is that Democrats keep moaning about how solemn and sober are the proceedings.
At Pajamas, "Solemn Much? Rashida Tlaib Shares Giddy Video Celebrating Trump's Impeachment," and the Blaze, "VIDEO: Far-left US Rep. Rashida Tlaib can't hide her happiness as she walks to House to vote for President Trump's impeachment."
The problem is that Democrats keep moaning about how solemn and sober are the proceedings.
At Pajamas, "Solemn Much? Rashida Tlaib Shares Giddy Video Celebrating Trump's Impeachment," and the Blaze, "VIDEO: Far-left US Rep. Rashida Tlaib can't hide her happiness as she walks to House to vote for President Trump's impeachment."
So solemn. So somber. pic.twitter.com/H6J6sTBBo8
— The Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) December 19, 2019
Pelosi's Impeachment Disaster
At AoSHQ, "Granny Nasty McBotoxRictus: I'm So Proud of Our Fake Impeachment I'm Scolding the Press Not to Ask About It, and I'm Obstructing it from Going to Trial."
The glare Pelosi gave her caucus when some Dems started to clap after she announced the first article of impeachment passed pic.twitter.com/8vONZlEyZ3— Peter Stevenson (@PeterWStevenson) December 19, 2019
Robert Stacy McCain on Impeachment
The latest at the Other McCain, "Trump Unites Republicans":
Impeachment has united Republicans in support of Trump, and nowhere is this unity more solid than in the Senate, where Mitch McConnell seems determined that the Democrats’ bogus ginned-up charges against the president will get a fair (but brief) hearing before being dismissed with the contemptuous ridicule it so richly deserves. As might be expected, Nancy Pelosi is not happy about this.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2019
Jennifer Delacruz's Thursday Forecast
It's been really cold overnight, and clear.
Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
Stunning Brie Larson
At Celeb Jihad, "BRIE LARSON’S TITS GUEST HOST “JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!”."
Jimmy looks STUNNING tonight! 😻 @BrieLarson #GuestHost #Kimmel pic.twitter.com/uTtQSApdwP
— Jimmy Kimmel Live (@JimmyKimmelLive) December 19, 2019
Iggy Azalea Bikini
At Drunken Stepfather, "IGGY AZALEA BIKINI OF THE DAY."
They watch me so much I should prolly win an Emmy... really! 😩😂🙄 https://t.co/LkGCGjVnEB— IGGY AZALEA #LOLA🎭 (@IGGYAZALEA) December 18, 2019
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Even Clownshow Nonsense Network's Polls Show Trump Winning on Impeachment
At AoSHQ, "lol: Trump Ahead of All Democrats In Another National Poll."
BONUS: At the Other McCain, "Impeachment Day Arrives":
#NEW National General Election:— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) December 17, 2019
Trump 44 (+3)
Biden 41
Trump 44 (+5)
Sanders 39
Trump 45 (+8)
Warren 37
Trump 43 (+9)
Bloomberg 34
Trump 43 (+10)
Buttigieg 33
Suffolk University/USA Today Poll https://t.co/UMEwcYkoEu
BONUS: At the Other McCain, "Impeachment Day Arrives":
Today the Democrats will vote to impeach President Trump for . . .Keep reading.
Uh, whatever. Ever since Trump was elected, Democrats promised they would impeach him if Nancy Pelosi ever got the Speaker’s gavel, and today they will keep that promise. The pretext for this was a “whistleblower” — a Democrat holdover on the National Security Council staff — who went running to Adam Schiff with a wild tale about Trump’s July phone call to the newly elected president of Ukraine. All questions about that phone call were answered by Trump through the simple expedient of releasing the transcript. But having worked themselves into an impeachment frenzy over this, Democrats refused to acknowledge that Trump had beat them, and continued stumbling onward...
Payback: Rep. Doug Collins Warns Next Democratic President Could Be Impeached (VIDEO)
It's true.
Democrats never seem to think their machinations will come back to bite them.
At the Epoch Times, "‘Payback’: Republicans Warn Next Democratic President Could Be Impeached."
Democrats never seem to think their machinations will come back to bite them.
At the Epoch Times, "‘Payback’: Republicans Warn Next Democratic President Could Be Impeached."
Bella Thorne Busts Out
At the Sun U.K., "HELLS BELLS: Bella Thorne bursts out of her bikini top and boasts ‘yes I know my boobs are big’Danielle Cinone: BELLA Thorne boasted "yes I know my boobs are big" as she shared saucy snaps with her assets nearly bursting out of her bikini top..."
Bella Thorne bursts out of her bikini top and boasts ‘yes I know my boobs are big’ https://t.co/BLkNPYonn9
— The Sun (@TheSun) December 17, 2019
Kelly Brook
She's still going, bigger than ever, apparently.
At the Sun U.K., "BABE HAS A SWIM Kelly Brook hogs the limelight as she swims with a pig in a plunging red swimsuit to celebrate her birthday in Bahamas."
At the Sun U.K., "BABE HAS A SWIM Kelly Brook hogs the limelight as she swims with a pig in a plunging red swimsuit to celebrate her birthday in Bahamas."
Kelly Brook hogs the limelight with a plunging red swimsuit in the Bahamas https://t.co/vJbuZy9znG
— The Sun Showbiz (@TheSunShowbiz) November 27, 2019
After General Election, Britain's Social Democracy on the Way Out
Following-up, "Labour's Stunning Shellacking."
From Matt Seaton, at the New York Review, "The Strange Death of Social-Democratic England":
Butthurt, but interesting.
Keep reading.
From Matt Seaton, at the New York Review, "The Strange Death of Social-Democratic England":
Margaret Thatcher persuaded many Britons that there was “no such thing as society.” Her heirs in the Conservative Party cast the EU as the new nanny state. Matt Seaton on what’s left of British social democracy: https://t.co/EEmw0s0r2q
— The New York Review of Books (@nybooks) December 13, 2019
The immediate, clear consequence of the UK election of December 12, 2019, is that Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has succeeded where Theresa May’s failed in the last general election, in 2017—by winning an emphatic parliamentary majority that can pass the legislation necessary to facilitate Britain’s departure from the European Union. The faint irony of that two-year hiatus and the handover of party leadership from May to Johnson is that the latter’s deal is rather worse—from the Brexiteers’ point of view—than the one May repeatedly failed to get past Parliament. Nevertheless, the 2019 general election will go down as the moment British voters in effect voted a resounding “yes” in a de facto second referendum on Brexit and gave Boris Johnson a mandate to make his deal law and attempt to meet the latest Brexit deadline (January 31, 2020).Interesting.
Far-reaching though the effects of this punctuation mark in the Brexit story will be, the 2019 general election may change the landscape of British politics and the fabric of its society in even more profound and decisive ways.
Brexit’s compromise over the status of Northern Ireland, half-in and half-out of Europe, is an unstable constitutional non-settlement that risks the fragile peace that’s held there since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, while accelerating the hopes of some for a United Ireland. But the future of the Union faces a still more pressing challenge from renewed calls for a referendum on independence for Scotland, where a large majority of voters favor continued membership in Europe. The specter of “the breakup of Britain” that has long haunted the United Kingdom may materialize at last—just at the moment when English nationalists are celebrating their Brexit victory.
So much for the political landscape; what of the social fabric? A fourth successive defeat for the Labour Party, with its most ambitious anti-austerity program yet, and an outright win for a Conservative Party that has purged its moderates have sharpened dividing lines, squeezed the liberal center, and broken consensus into polarity. A minority of Britons—roughly a third, who will now see themselves as effectively disenfranchised—voted for a radical expansion of the public sector, a great leap forward toward a socialist Britain. But the plurality chose a party that, while promising more spending, has actually recomposed itself around a reanimated Thatcherite vision of exclusionary, anti-egalitarian, moralizing social Darwinism. Some part of the Tory electoral coalition might have more welfare-chauvinist reflexes, but the greater part of it distrusts the state, resents the taxation that pays for it, and would like to shrink both.
What is at stake after this election, then—in a Britain that might soon mean, to all intents and purposes, England & Wales—is the future of what has made it a reasonably civilized country since 1945: social democracy...
Butthurt, but interesting.
Keep reading.
Charlotte McKinney New Bikini Photos
At Taxi Driver, "Charlotte McKinney Fills Out her Black Bikini Perfectly."
Charlotte McKinney Fills Out her Black Bikini Perfectly - https://t.co/0nlQUI4AYM - pic.twitter.com/oZ5liz1vxx
— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) December 9, 2019
Letter from President Donald J. Trump to the Speaker of the House of Representatives
Leftists have freaked out after President Trump defended himself against Speaker Pelosi's impeachment circus.
For example, at New York Magazine, via Memeorandum, "Trump Writes Insane Letter to Pelosi Showing Why He's Unfit for Office," and "It is hard to capture how bizarre and frightening Trump's letter to Pelosi is."
Cut through the fog. Read it yourself.
Via Mollie:
For example, at New York Magazine, via Memeorandum, "Trump Writes Insane Letter to Pelosi Showing Why He's Unfit for Office," and "It is hard to capture how bizarre and frightening Trump's letter to Pelosi is."
Cut through the fog. Read it yourself.
Via Mollie:
Media coverage of @realDonaldTrump’s letter to Pelosi is unhinged. Really worth reading actual letter instead of mediated interpretation from emotional and frustrated journalists. https://t.co/LZ60A5Fs45
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 18, 2019
What the New Socialists Want More Than Anything is to Punish the Rich
Radical leftists are looking to fulfill Marx's vision in the 21st century: Expropriate the expropriators!
Here's Jerry Z. Muller, at Foreign Affairs, "The Neosocialist Delusion: Wealth Is Not the Problem":
The neosocialists are descended from Rousseau. They downplay poverty and fetishize equality, focus on wealth distribution rather than wealth creation, and seem to care as much about lowering those at the top as raising those at the bottom.
Image Credit: The People's Cube, "Chiquita Khrushchev: 'We will bury you!'."
Here's Jerry Z. Muller, at Foreign Affairs, "The Neosocialist Delusion: Wealth Is Not the Problem":
Still more.
The movement’s signature policy proposal is a wealth tax, an annual levy on household assets. Touted by economists such as Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, all associated with the Paris School of Economics, the concept has been embraced by both Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, U.S. senators from Vermont and Massachusetts, respectively, who are running for the Democratic presidential nomination. At first, Warren advocated a two percent tax on households worth more than $50 million and a three percent tax on billionaires. Later, pressed on how she would pay for her proposed universal health insurance, she doubled the billionaire tax to six percent. Sanders’s plan starts at taxing $16 million in assets at one percent and tops out at an eight percent tax for assets exceeding $10 billion.
The radicalism of this approach is often underestimated. Many people conflate wealth taxes with higher income taxes or see them as mere extensions of a similar concept. But wealth taxes are fundamentally different instruments with much broader ramifications for economic dynamism and individual liberty.
The main effect of a wealth tax would be to discourage wealthy individuals from holding demonstrable assets. Any individual or household within shouting distance of the threshold would have to get its assets valued annually, imposing costs and creating a permanent jobs program for tax lawyers and accountants, whose chief responsibility would be to figure out ways around the law, including moving assets abroad.
A wealth tax would dramatically curtail private investment. The higher people rise on the economic ladder, the more of their resources go to investment instead of consumption. Those investments, in turn, often fuel innovative, risky ventures, which get funded in the hopes that they will eventually produce still greater gains. A wealth tax would upend the incentive structure for rich people, causing many to stop funding productive economic activity and focus instead on reducing their tax exposure and hiding their assets.
Warren contends that calculating one’s wealth tax would be as easy as calculating one’s property tax, but that is ridiculous. Take a firm that has a market value but no income—a frequent situation for startups but also common for established firms in various situations, such as a turnaround. Rich investors in such firms would have to sell their shares to pay the wealth tax or force the companies to disburse cash rather than invest in the future. Either way, the tax would discourage investment, reduce innovation, and encourage short-term thinking.
A wealth tax, finally, would force everyone whose assets were near its minimal threshold to give the government a full accounting of all those assets every year: homes, furniture, vehicles, heirlooms, bank accounts, investments and liabilities, and more. The result would be a huge expansion of the reach of government into citizens’ lives, a corresponding reduction in citizens’ privacy, and the accumulation and storage of vast amounts of highly sensitive data with few safeguards to prevent their misuse.
It is not only successful individuals who draw the neosocialists’ ire; it is also successful companies. If a firm grows big enough to become famous, it becomes a potential target of vilification; if it grows too big, it becomes a target for destruction. Sanders, Warren, and Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic representative from New York, accordingly, have all pledged to break up Amazon, Facebook, and Google.
Here they can draw on a venerable antimonopoly tradition in American political culture from the trustbusters on, rooted in the assumption that the further away you move from Smith’s ideal of perfect competition among many small firms, the more the public is hurt. The economist Joseph Schumpeter, however, argued that Smith had greatly underestimated both the dynamism of capitalism and the role of entrepreneurs in driving it. Capitalism’s manifold benefits didn’t just happen; they were created, by a relatively small group of people responsible for introducing new products, services, and business methods. Entrepreneurs sought the big profits associated with temporary monopolies and so were driven to create whole new industries they could dominate.
Large companies, Schumpeter realized, acted as engines of innovation, plowing back some of their profits into research and development and encouraging others to do the same in the hopes of becoming an acquisition target. He would have been delighted with Silicon Valley, viewing technology giants such as Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft as poster children for the enormous benefits to consumers that entrepreneurs generate.
Companies such as Amazon and Walmart, meanwhile, maintain their position through furious competition in service and price, contributing to the virtual elimination of inflation in the American economy. And yet it is precisely these dynamic, successful, customer-oriented companies that the neosocialists want to tax heavily, burden with regulations, and cut up for parts.
Image Credit: The People's Cube, "Chiquita Khrushchev: 'We will bury you!'."
Jennifer Delacruz's Mid-Week Forecast
Well, it's not snowing outside at the moment, heh.
Not too bad, a week or so before Christmas.
Here's the fantastic Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
Not too bad, a week or so before Christmas.
Here's the fantastic Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
Andrew C. McCarthy, Ball of Collusion
At Amazon, Andrew C. McCarthy, Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
New Era of Cyberwar
Sue Halpern reviews Andy Greenberg,'s, Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers, at the New York Review:
yup. That’s where we are https://t.co/xrqv5Rkc53
— Brooke Binkowski (@brooklynmarie) December 14, 2019
These Obama/Trump Voters Are Just Trump Voters Now
It's Alexi McCammond, at Axios:
"He's proven what he's promised over and over to us."
— Alexi McCammond (@alexi) December 16, 2019
Some Obama/Trump swing voters here are firmly in Trump’s camp now — and they're sick of impeachment.
The 2+ hour convo revealed major warning signs for the Dem Party in a crucial swing county. @axios https://t.co/QUqBcNTVsG
Lindsey Pelas Busting Out in Green
Mitch McConnell Rejects Charles Schumer’s Opening Offer on Impeachment Trial (VIDEO)
He's the Senate Minority Butthurt Leader, at Politico, "McConnell rejects Schumer’s opening offer on impeachment trial: “It is not the Senate’s job to leap into the breach and search desperately for ways to get to ‘guilty,’” McConnell says."
Nice Playmate Lady
Don't know who this is, but she's wild!
Iryna Ivanova?
See here, for example, or just scroll her feed wow!
Iryna Ivanova?
See here, for example, or just scroll her feed wow!
Are you still focused on work today? ❤️ LINK IN BIO for more https://t.co/YMKf7oVX7Q pic.twitter.com/PjKWPChW9v— playmateiryna (@IrynaIvanova) December 16, 2019
Mark 'Gator' Rogowski Gets Parole
He was a skate buddy of mine from back in the day. Dude committed a heinous murder.
At ABC News 10 San Diego:
At ABC News 10 San Diego:
Labour's Stunning Shellacking
It's a realignment. From Toby Young, at Quillette, "Britain’s Labour Party Got Woke — And Now It’s Broke":
“The disappearance of Labour’s traditional base isn’t just the story of this election, but one of the main themes of Britain’s post-war political history.” https://t.co/O0QYq4RFFC
— Quillette (@Quillette) December 15, 2019
The crumbling of the ‘Red Wall’ is the big story of this election and some commentators are describing it as a “one off.” The conventional wisdom is that working class voters have “lent” their votes to the Conservatives and, barring an upset, will give them back next time round. It’s Brexit, supposedly, that has been the game-changer—an excuse leapt on by Corbyn’s outriders in the media, who are loathe to blame Labour’s defeat on their man.
If you look at the working class constituencies that turned blue, most of them voted to leave the European Union in 2016 by a significant margin—Great Grimsby, for instance, an English sea port in Yorkshire, where Leave outpolled Remain by 71.45 to 28.55 per cent. Labour’s problem, according to this analysis, is that it didn’t commit to taking Britain out of the EU during the campaign but instead said it would negotiate a new exit deal and then hold a second referendum in which the public would be able to choose between that deal and Remain. This fudge may have been enough to keep graduates on side, but it alienated working class Leave voters in England’s rust belt.
This analysis doesn’t bear much scrutiny. To begin with, the desertion of Labour by its working class supporters—and its increasing popularity with more affluent, better educated voters—is a long-term trend, not an aberration. The disappearance of Labour’s traditional base isn’t just the story of this election, but one of the main themes of Britain’s post-war political history. At its height, Labour managed to assemble a coalition of university-educated liberals in London and the South and low-income voters in Britain’s industrial heartlands in the Midlands and the North—“between Hampstead and Hull,” as the saying goes. But mass immigration and globalization have driven a wedge between Labour’s middle class and working class supporters, as has Britain’s growing welfare bill and its membership of the European Union.
At the October election in 1974, 49 per cent of skilled workers (C2) and 57 per cent of semi-skilled and unskilled workers (DE) voted Labour; by 2010, those numbers had fallen to 29 per cent and 40 per cent respectively. Among middle class voters (ABC1), support for the Conservatives fell over the same time period from 56 per cent in 1974 to 39 per cent in 2010. In 1974, Labour enjoyed a 23-point lead among skilled working class voters (C2), but by 2010 the Conservatives had overtaken them in this demo to lead by eight points—a pattern repeated in 2017. Among graduates, by contrast, Labour led by 17 points in 2017, up from a two-point lead in 2015. (See this data table compiled by Ipsos MORI, a polling company.)
Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters have talked a good deal about winning back these working class voters, but his policy positions haven’t been designed to appeal to them. I’m not just talking about his ambivalence on Brexit—there’s a widespread feeling among voters who value flag, faith and family that Corbyn isn’t one of them. Before he became Labour leader in 2015, he was an energetic protestor against nearly every armed conflict Britain has been involved in since Suez, including the Falklands War. He’s also called for the abandonment of Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent, the withdrawal of the UK from NATO and the dismantling of our security services—not to mention declining to sing the National Anthem at a Battle of Britain service in 2015. From the point of view of many working class voters, for whom love of country is still a deeply felt emotion, Corbyn seems to side with the country’s enemies more often than he does with Britain.
Corbyn’s victory in the Labour leadership election was followed by a surge in party membership— from 193,754 at the end of 2014 to 388,103 by the end of 2015. But the activists he appeals to are predominantly middle class. According to internal Party data leaked to the Guardian, a disproportionate number of them are “high status city dwellers” who own their own homes.
A careful analysis of the policies set out in Labour’s latest manifesto reveals that the main beneficiaries of the party’s proposed increase in public expenditure—which the Conservatives costed at an eye-watering £1.2 trillion—would be its middle class supporters.
For instance, the party pledged to cut rail fares by 33 per cent and pay for it by slashing the money spent on roads. But only 11 per cent of Britain’s commuters travel by train compared to 68 per cent who drive—and the former tend to be more affluent than the latter. Corbyn also promised to abolish university tuition fees at a cost of £7.2 billion per annum, a deeply regressive policy which, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies, would benefit middle- and high-earning graduates with “very little” upside for those on low incomes.
It’s also worth noting that Corbyn’s interests and appearance—he’s a 70-year-old vegetarian with a fondness for train-drivers’ hats who has spent his life immersed in protest politics—strike many working class voters as “weird,” a word that kept coming up on the doorstep according to my fellow canvasser in Newcastle. He’s also presided over the invasion of his party by virulent anti-Semites and Labour is currently in the midst of an investigation by Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission thanks to his failure to deal with this. One of his supporters has already blamed the Jews for Labour’s defeat.
But Corbyn isn’t the main reason C2DE voters have turned away from Labour, any more than Brexit is. Rather, they’ve both exacerbated a trend that’s been underway for at least 45 years, which is the fracturing of the “Hampstead and Hull” coalition and the ebbing away of Labour’s working class support.
Another, related phenomenon that’s been overlooked is that these “topsy turvey” politics are hardly unique to Britain. Left-of-center parties in most parts of the Anglosphere, as well as other Western democracies, have seen the equivalent of their own ‘Red Walls’ collapsing. One of the reasons Scott Morrison’s Liberals confounded expectations to win the Australian election last May was because Bill Shorten’s Labour Party was so unpopular in traditional working class areas like Queensland, and support for socially democratic parties outside the large cities in Scandinavia has cratered over the past 15 years or so.
Thomas Piketty, the French Marxist, wrote a paper about this phenomenon last year entitled ‘Brahmin Left vs Merchant Right: Rising Inequality and the Changing Structure of Political Conflict’ and it’s the subject of Capital and Ideology, his new book. His hypothesis is that politics in the US, Britain, and France—he confines his analysis to those three countries—is dominated by the struggle between two elite groups: the Brahmin Left and the Merchant Right. He points out that left-wing parties in the US, Britain and France used to rely on ‘nativist’ voters to win elections—low education, low income—but since the 1970s have begun to attract more and more ‘globalist’ voters—high education, high income (with the exception of the top 10 per cent of income earners). The nativists, meanwhile, have drifted to the Right, forming a coalition with the business elite. He crunches the data to show that in the US, from the 1940s to the 1960s, the more educated people were, the more likely they were to vote Republican. Now, the opposite is true, with 70% of voters with masters degrees voting for Hilary in 2016. “The trend is virtually identical in all three countries,” he writes.
In Piketty’s view, the electoral preferences of the post-industrial working class—the precariat—is a kind of false consciousness, often engendered by populist snake-charmers like Matteo Salvini and Viktor Orban. He’s intensely suspicious of the unholy alliance between super-rich “merchants” and the lumpen proletariat, and similar noises have been made about the levels of support Boris has managed to attract...
Monday, December 16, 2019
Kenneth Turan Reviews 'Richard Jewell'
An economical review, but positive, at LAT, "Review: Clint Eastwood’s ‘Richard Jewell’ illuminates a real-life nightmare."
Review: Clint Eastwood's ‘Richard Jewell’ illuminates a real-life nightmare https://t.co/poZVU4PZPF— LAT Entertainment (@latimesent) December 13, 2019
Heather Mac Donald, The Diversity Delusion
*BUMPED.*
At Amazon, Heather Mac Donald, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.
At Amazon, Heather Mac Donald, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.
Realignment: A Tectonic Demographic Shift is Under Way
It's Yoni Appelbaum, at the Atlantic, "How America Ends":
“How America Ends’— Mia Farrow (@MiaFarrow) December 1, 2019
A tectonic demographic shift is under way. Can the country hold together?
by Yoni Appelbaum via The Atlantic https://t.co/S7eahHw7Jl
The United States is undergoing a transition perhaps no rich and stable democracy has ever experienced: Its historically dominant group is on its way to becoming a political minority—and its minority groups are asserting their co-equal rights and interests. If there are precedents for such a transition, they lie here in the United States, where white Englishmen initially predominated, and the boundaries of the dominant group have been under negotiation ever since. Yet those precedents are hardly comforting. Many of these renegotiations sparked political conflict or open violence, and few were as profound as the one now under way.
Within the living memory of most Americans, a majority of the country’s residents were white Christians. That is no longer the case, and voters are not insensate to the change—nearly a third of conservatives say they face “a lot” of discrimination for their beliefs, as do more than half of white evangelicals. But more epochal than the change that has already happened is the change that is yet to come: Sometime in the next quarter century or so, depending on immigration rates and the vagaries of ethnic and racial identification, nonwhites will become a majority in the U.S. For some Americans, that change will be cause for celebration; for others, it may pass unnoticed. But the transition is already producing a sharp political backlash, exploited and exacerbated by the president. In 2016, white working-class voters who said that discrimination against whites is a serious problem, or who said they felt like strangers in their own country, were almost twice as likely to vote for Trump as those who did not. Two-thirds of Trump voters agreed that “the 2016 election represented the last chance to stop America’s decline.” In Trump, they’d found a defender.
In 2002, the political scientist Ruy Teixeira and the journalist John Judis published a book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, which argued that demographic changes—the browning of America, along with the movement of more women, professionals, and young people into the Democratic fold—would soon usher in a “new progressive era” that would relegate Republicans to permanent minority political status. The book argued, somewhat triumphally, that the new emerging majority was inexorable and inevitable. After Barack Obama’s reelection, in 2012, Teixeira doubled down on the argument in The Atlantic, writing, “The Democratic majority could be here to stay.” Two years later, after the Democrats got thumped in the 2014 midterms, Judis partially recanted, saying that the emerging Democratic majority had turned out to be a mirage and that growing support for the GOP among the white working class would give the Republicans a long-term advantage. The 2016 election seemed to confirm this.
But now many conservatives, surveying demographic trends, have concluded that Teixeira wasn’t wrong—merely premature. They can see the GOP’s sinking fortunes among younger voters, and feel the culture turning against them, condemning them today for views that were commonplace only yesterday. They are losing faith that they can win elections in the future. With this come dark possibilities.
The Republican Party has treated Trump’s tenure more as an interregnum than a revival, a brief respite that can be used to slow its decline. Instead of simply contesting elections, the GOP has redoubled its efforts to narrow the electorate and raise the odds that it can win legislative majorities with a minority of votes. In the first five years after conservative justices on the Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, 39 percent of the counties that the law had previously restrained reduced their number of polling places. And while gerrymandering is a bipartisan sin, over the past decade Republicans have indulged in it more heavily. In Wisconsin last year, Democrats won 53 percent of the votes cast in state legislative races, but just 36 percent of the seats. In Pennsylvania, Republicans tried to impeach the state Supreme Court justices who had struck down a GOP attempt to gerrymander congressional districts in that state. The Trump White House has tried to suppress counts of immigrants for the 2020 census, to reduce their voting power. All political parties maneuver for advantage, but only a party that has concluded it cannot win the votes of large swaths of the public will seek to deter them from casting those votes at all.
The history of the United States is rich with examples of once-dominant groups adjusting to the rise of formerly marginalized populations—sometimes gracefully, more often bitterly, and occasionally violently. Partisan coalitions in the United States are constantly reshuffling, realigning along new axes. Once-rigid boundaries of faith, ethnicity, and class often prove malleable. Issues gain salience or fade into irrelevance; yesterday’s rivals become tomorrow’s allies.
But sometimes, that process of realignment breaks down. Instead of reaching out and inviting new allies into its coalition, the political right hardens, turning against the democratic processes it fears will subsume it. A conservatism defined by ideas can hold its own against progressivism, winning converts to its principles and evolving with each generation. A conservatism defined by identity reduces the complex calculus of politics to a simple arithmetic question—and at some point, the numbers no longer add up...
This Impeachment is Different
A surprisingly interesting piece, from Lawrence Lessig, at Politco, "This Impeachment Is Different—and More Dangerous":
Thanks to the Internet and a media environment of echo chambers, impeachment in 2019 is fundamentally different from impeachment in 1868, 1974, & 1998https://t.co/aFAQnFHkxQ— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) December 9, 2019
The impeachment of Donald Trump will happen in a radically different media environment — again. (In Clinton’s impeachment, standing between Trump’s and Nixon’s, the effects were consistent but muted relative to today.) Polling persists, indeed it has expanded, and so politicians will know how the proceedings are playing among their own voters. But as information channels have multiplied, real “broadcast democracy”—the shared and broad engagement with a common set of facts—has disappeared. An abundance of choice means fewer focus on the news, and those who do are more engaged politically, and more partisan. No doubt, there is more published today about impeachment across a wide range of media than before, but it lives within different and smaller niches.RTWT.
That division will have a profound effect on how this impeachment will matter to Americans. In short, it will matter differently depending on how those Americans come to understand reality. In a study published last month, the research institute PRRI found that 55 percent of “Republicans for whom Fox News is their primary news source say there is nothing Trump could do to lose their approval, compared to only 29 percent of Republicans who do not cite Fox News as their primary news source.” That 26-percentage-point difference is driven not just by politics but by the media source.
This means that as the story of impeachment develops, it will be understood differently across the network-based tribes of America. The correlation among conservatives and liberals alike that drove Nixon from the White House won’t be visible in 2020—because it won’t be there. Regardless of what happens, on one side, it will be justice delivered. On the other, justice denied.
That difference, in turn, will radically constrain the politicians who Americans have entrusted to render judgment on the president. The reality of Fox News Republicans will be persistently visible to red-state representatives. More idealistic, less inherently partisan senators, such as Ben Sasse of Nebraska, might have a view of the “right” thing in their heart of hearts, but they will be forced to choose between what they know and what they know their very distinctive voting public believes. So far, few have faced that choice with courage.
Though the president was wrong to invoke it in this context, the Civil War may well have been the last time we suffered a media environment like this. Then, it was censorship laws that kept the truths of the North separated from the truths of the South. And though there was no polling, the ultimate support for the war, at least as manifested initially, demonstrated to each of those separated publics a depth of tribal commitment that was as profound and as tragic as any in our history. That commitment, driven by those different realities, led America into the bloodiest war in its history.
We’re not going to war today. We are not separated by geography, and we’re not going to take machetes to our neighbors. But the environment of our culture today leaves us less able to work through fundamental differences than at any time in our past. Indeed, as difference drives hate, hate pays—at least the media companies and too many politicians...
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Alexandra Stan
At Celeb Jihad, "ALEXANDRA STAN NUDE SNAPCHAT VIDEO LEAKED."
Alexandra Stan at FHM @FHM @FHM_RO pic.twitter.com/prQAgcrV
— Alexandra Stan (@StanAlexandra) January 31, 2013
Friday, December 13, 2019
Elie Johnson
That's one big, healthy lady!
I'm back . . . and I'm happy! 💋💋💋 #ThursdayMotivation #thursdayvibes pic.twitter.com/zrO2s92Su0
— Elle Johnson (@_ElleJohnson) December 12, 2019
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Monday, December 9, 2019
Sunday, December 8, 2019
On the 2nd Day of Christmas?
Not sure what the promotion is, but some nice photos.
At Drunken Stepfather, "ON THE 2ND DAY OF STEPXMAS – TOP 10 CELEB OPIATE-USERS FOR APEX KRATOM OF THE DAY."
At Drunken Stepfather, "ON THE 2ND DAY OF STEPXMAS – TOP 10 CELEB OPIATE-USERS FOR APEX KRATOM OF THE DAY."
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